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Intelligence Services Are Not “Intelligent”

The 9/11 Commission report on U.S. intelligence
failures subscribes to the notion that there is a way in which the
government can “fix” the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and
other information-gathering agencies. The authors assume that if
only a competent group of CIA analysts had been able to gain access
before 9/11 to the available information on Islamic terrorist
groups, the Bush administration would have been able to thwart the
attacks on New York and Washington.

In a way, those who prepared the commission’s report imagine
that the U.S. intelligence agencies can be transformed into
something akin to efficient information-gathering and analysis
systems. Sophisticated technology and skilled spies will retrieve
every piece of data on terrorism that is out there. Highly educated
researchers, fluent in the many dialects of Arabic and Urdu
languages, will examine the facts and figures and super intelligent
analysts will draw the right conclusions. And based on that flow of
information and analysis, a group of dedicated public servants and
honorable statesmen, led by an independent and impartial
“intelligence czar” will recommend the correct policies to the
White House and ensure that 9/11-like catastrophes never happen
again.

It’s that kind of belief in the possibility of individuals and
organizations knowing enough to predict human behavior and to alter
its outcome that was criticized by the renowned economist Friedrich
Hayek as “hubris”— that is, the pride which challenges the
gods.

The winner of the Nobel Prize in economics and one of the
leading intellectual forces behind free market economics in the
late 20th century didn’t focus much attention on national security
policy, and he never studied the operations of government
intelligence agencies. But Hayek, throughout his life, attacked
what he called “scientism” — the imitation in the social sciences,
including economics and political science, of the methods of the
physical sciences. It was the limitations of human knowledge that
in Hayek’s view, made the market so important because it created,
conveyed, and revealed information in a way no other human
institution, and certainly no government agency, could ever
emulate.

The free market model presumes that the flow of data, knowledge,
and ideas can permit consumers to gain access to complete and
accurate information on the basis of which they can make the
reasonable choices. As Hayek argued, a market of information and
ideas, free from the control of government and other centralized
powers, results in a competitive discovery process that cannot be
predicted in advance. His ideal model was based on cooperative and
competitive behavior among individuals, households, and enterprises
that appears haphazard and anarchic but that helps produce accurate
information and efficient results.

The government’s intelligence agencies are the ultimate
antithesis to this model of a free market of information and ideas.
If anything, they represent the ideal of “scientism” and social
engineering that was disparaged by Hayek. By definition, these
institutions are public monopolies that collect and manipulate
information. They represent the most secretive, restrictive, and a
tightly controlled bureaucracy in a government that abhors the
notion of a “spontaneous order” that results from the competition
of ideas.

That is the nature of the beast, of the intelligence agency that
operates in a confined and elusive sphere of public policy called
“national security,” under the strict control of government
officials that are driven not by the search for the truth but
rather by bureaucratic and political interests. It is a system that
is bound to create a “group think” mentality and to downplay and
dismiss information that doesn’t fit the agenda of
policymakers.

Even under the best of circumstances in which the CIA is able to
recruit the best and the brightest, it will never be able to
predict the outcomes of global political and economic phenomena. If
anything, as the case of Iraq’s alleged WMD demonstrates, the
monopoly over information and political authority that the
intelligence agency has could end up distorting the free flow of
information and ideas. And that will make it less likely that the
public and the government will arrive at decisions that reflect the
interests and values of a majority of Americans.

Proposing that we can “fix” this system to make it an open,
objective, and independent information-processing system, is not
very different than arguing that we can make a centralized economy
more efficient, or that we can liberalize a communist government.
Boys will be boys — and intelligence agencies will continue to be
politicized, incompetent, and wasteful government bureaucracies.
And, occasionally, they will even get lucky. As a result of
sophisticated technology, the courage of an American agent, or a
defection by an enemy spy, they may end up providing a marginal
advantage to the U.S. government during time of crisis and war.

Instead of trying to “fix” the CIA, Americans would be better
off by electing hubris-free presidents and lawmakers who don’t go
to war, invade other countries, and try to change the world based
on the kind of incomplete information and distorted analysis that
this government agency provides.